


Orbital Shells

by deltacrow



Category: Original Work, Valence
Genre: Firefly AU, Multi, Slow To Update, Unfinished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 13:27:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11059935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deltacrow/pseuds/deltacrow
Summary: a Firefly AU of Valence, an RP-turning-comic by AO3 user peepy (jouleteon on tumblr) and posted at https://valence-bh.tumblr.com/





	Orbital Shells

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peepy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peepy/gifts).



> The RP is originally found on bulbapedia forums and has since terminated, but in Dec 2016 i pulled jouleteon in a small art exchange. I thought, i might be able to make a 3k ficlet for her with her Valence kids as the Firefly crew.
> 
> its 4.7k and it has expanded in my brain beyond my wildest dreams. Writers block and real life have, evidently, put it on hold, but i want to get it up as it is so far, see if i cant come back to it.

\--- ---

“You can’t be serious,” Kai complains, slouching indolently. “The bounty on this moron is  _ 14 thousand credits. _ You have given this crew  _ two thirds of that _ .”

“Yes,  _ well _ .” The Rat almost looks contrite, but his nose is scrunched like the crew in front of him are fencing rotten produce instead of a turning in a legitimately wanted man. “I would normally pay you your desired rate, however your motley crew over there cost me at least three times this when you brought the DSHA down on my more lucrative dealers  _ last month-- _ ”

Kai leans into his first mate and mutters “was that his month or our month?”

Nova doesn’t even deign to respond. 

“It’s a valid question,” Kai sighs.

“—and you aren’t even  _ pretending _ to listen, you self-absorbed prick. God, this is why I hate working with your crew. I cannot wait to see you burn in Hell;  _ please _ escort them out so I can see my next appointment.” The Rat waves a hand at them and turns away in disgust. Nova moves to pinch the bridge of his nose and aborts the movement, but the sigh manages to escape him anyway. “Why are you like this,” he says. Kai could swear that he sees the life being drained from Nova as he says every word, which Kai would normally find very impressive-- but now, light both a head and a third of what they’re rightfully entitled to, he only finds this mildly impressive.

“I didn’t think the Rat had appointments,” Kai deflects. “I thought you more or less showed up with something worth his while.”

_ “Keep it down.” _

“I don’t see why I should if I’m  _ right _ —”   
Nova slams an elbow into his gut as one of the Rat’s hired muscle jostles a young woman into his reception room. The light that cuts through the gloom manages to gild her hair. She gets hustled through the plush throws that cover the doorway into the Rat’s office, and can see the hems of her shirt fraying—from travel, perhaps? From nerves?—

—And then he slams into a support pillar. 

Nova guides Kai by the wrist into the tunnel market and back towards the ship hangers. “It’s time we found something a little legal to do. I’m having Amy screen passengers for our next flight out; see if we can’t rustle up some cash that way.”   
  


“Aw, no, Nova—she can’t pick a pickpocket from a Shepherd” Kai complains. “Is someone screening  _ her? _ ”

Nova raises an eyebrow.

“Look, it’s a  _ valid question _ ,” Kai protests. Nova strides onward. The clamor from the market swallows up any other sounds of protest, and the two are swept away into the throng of people.

 

\--- ---

 

There’s a young woman sitting outside of the gangplank of a ship in a lawn chair that has seen better days. The young lady has as well, Liza can tell, and it intrigues her.

And then the young woman calls out to her. “We’re taking passengers,” she announces. It’s not unkindly, but perhaps a little stiffly.

Perhaps, too, this is the sign Liza was looking for. “I think I’d love to. I’m not sure—” Liza rubs at her chin with one hand as her other hand skitters off of the handle of her luggage and crawls into the folds of her robes. “I’m afraid my payment is… unorthodox.”

“What a coincidence—so am I,” she snorts. “Can I make that call for myself?”

In for a credit, in for the chit, Liza supposes, though gambling or even holding currency is not particularly Shepherdly of her. She pulls out the box—plain and unadorned and the size of her palm—and opens it. The young woman’s mouth drops open and she snatches the box and Liza’s suitcase away from her, marching up the gangplank. 

“What are you waiting for? Get  _ in  _ already. Welcome aboard and all that.” The woman flashes Liza a smile like the first snowmelt in spring (tentative, a promise of new life, water on chapped earth,  _ she’s everything I’ve been looking for _ ) and Liza knows that this ship is the one she needs to be on. “I’ll get you set up in a nice room.”   
  
\--- ---

 

By the time Kai and Nova have managed to head back to the ship with all of their supplies, newcomers have taken over the berth. The young woman from the Rat’s is directing Juliet and a massive cryopod around the space. “Be  _ careful _ with that,” she demands. “Gods above be  _ gentle _ , right—”

“This weighs a Standard fuck-ton, PSY isn’t—”   
“— _ there _ .”

“—a fucking party trick,  _ oof _ .” Juliet lets it go and the entire ship shudders minutely. Kai mutters something uncomplimentary and stalks off; Nova shakes his head ruefully. Someone’s got to keep an eye on the newbies; it looks like it has to be him. “The hell is in here, platinum?”

“It’s got frozen samples and all of my supplies. Don’t think I won’t charge you if I find a single flask cracked!”

“Bring it up with the captain!” Juliet calls back. She goes back for the last guy’s things—he’s got no need for PSY talents, but if the man might pass on more for ogling her arms, she’ll let him ogle a little. Yatsuri-That-Was might be dead, but tipping for good service isn’t. She might even steal away some of Ant’s services if it means she can get into this guy’s wallet—anyone with those kind of shiny rings has to be flush with credits. Who knows? Maybe she’ll manage to get one of those and refit it…

 

\--- ---

 

“So! This is you captain speaking,” Kai announces over the intercom. “I’d like everyone to gather in the kitchen so we can go over what you can and can’t touch.  _ Everyone _ , Rick,” he croons, “including you, you sad, greasy muffin. Chop chop!”

 

\--- ---

 

“ _ THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SHOUTING _ , why aren’t you all here already? I can’t believe Rick didn’t show. Amy—oh, no,” Kai drapes himself over the dining table in the common space, “the Master’s Blasters aren’t here! How terribly antisocial of and just like them!”

“Captain,” Nova mutters. “Time and place.”

“Well! We will just have to accept that any strangers to us are either stowaways or our feral pilot and engineer.” Kai beams, and the woman who was yelling at Juliet earlier cringes away; the sneer on her face means it’s probably in disgust. A shame; he could have really enjoyed getting to know her. Could still yet, perhaps? The ship might have sailed. Unfortunate.

_ “Captain _ .”

“Fine, spoilsport. To business, then.” He pulls a datapad out of his pocket and tabs through to the notes Nova and Amy took of their passengers and their cargo. “This is a Firefly class cargo ship, capable of travelling approximately 57 AU a day with an acceleration of 5.5G. This means that you, Ms. Hazel Blair, are getting dropped at Osiris first, which will be in a month and a half, Standard time. Next order of business would be…”

Juliet hardly looks up from where she’s reheating ration packs and flatly announces “stay outta the crew space” with a pointed glare at Ms. Hazel Blair.

“That’s right, true,” Kai concedes. “The cockpit, crew living spaces, and berth are off-limits—” a cry of protest sounds around him, but Kai plows on “—and space in the infirmary is by appointment or necessity only, and the designated Companion berth is by appointment and Companion discretion only.”

“I—I need to check on my samples,” Ms. Blair pleads.

“That’s not up for debate.”

“They need regular monitoring and I’m the only one qualified to—”

“It’s  _ not up for discussion. _ ”

Ms. Blair falls silent. She bites her lip and, eyes flitting in the direction she came from, nods shallowly.

 

“You, Mr. Isaac Morrell, have a contract waiting for you in the Keilos system? You’ll be there in three months, with no issues. And you, Shepherd Liza No-Last-Name-Given, have the most unusual itinerary I’ve ever seen.” Kai looks up at her form where he’s hunched over his datapad. “Your destination was, and I quote, ‘I’ll know it when I see it’?”

“T-that’s correct, and I’m told it’s very common for members of the clergy—”

“—to lie to their newest recruits, yes, it’s all very tragic,” Kai sighs. “So please update your papers or we will drop you at the next refuel site. And if you’d like to pray about it, I’d advise your god to get back to you between 10 and 16-hundred, Standard time.” He passes the datapad to Liza with a sunny smile on his face. “We’re very busy, you can imagine.”

\--- ---

 

Hazel takes her time unpacking her instruments and repacking them with her travelling gear. This entire operation can tumble sideways into Hell if she’s not careful. She’s had her share of carelessness.

 

“Are you  _ finished  _ yet,” the crew’s enforcer whines. She’s leaning on the doorframe to the ship’s interior, arms folded and hip cocked. “The other two cleared out ages ago; what’s the hold-up?”

Hazel takes a breath, blows it out slowly. This is a break from the norm for a normally in-charge chemist. “The samples I’ve taken with me are….  _ Delicate _ ,” she enunciates. “They’re fine on their own, but if they mix  _ at all _ …” She makes a vague gesture with her hand, and turns her attention back to the viewport for the cryopod. “I  _ should  _ be checking on their status daily and monitoring for shifts in the suspended animation capsule to search for any failings in the integrity of the sealing, but if you’d prefer to live dangerously, then I  _ suppose _ I’ve got no choice.”

 

Vitals seem fine for the—the specimens inside, but she can’t be too careful with her cargo. She’s not entirely sure how her standard tinctures will fare against that kind of disastrous doctoring.

 

_ Enough,  _ Hazel thinks firmly. This is the best she can do for now. The rest of this trip depends on her selling the act, and then she’s home free.

 

\--- ---

By Hazel’s reckoning, a week passes before she meets one of the faceless members of the crew. The engineer, Amy Masters, has been around in what the internal ship timepieces designate as morning, tinkering with odds and ends at the dining table in the common space and drinking Earl Grey, but the pilot and the Companion haven’t haunted any of the spaces where Hazel can go.

 

So seeing a stranger huddled over a decrepit coffee maker, protein tablet in hand, makes her pause that morning.

 

He’s handsome, she thinks abstractly; broad shoulders and blond hair cropped close to his head. The effect a strong jaw would have is ruined by a sleepy sense of apathy and the protein tablet, but overall-- a man she would have welcomed waking up next to in college.

 

She doesn’t have time for this. Hazel takes one last look at him, because she can still dream, and turns on her heel back towards her cabin.

 

\--- ---

 

It takes another two weeks for the crew to settle around their cargo. The Shepherd makes Kai leery, and it’s written into every action he takes-- Nova can read the frown lines in quiet moments and the overly-dramatic sentiments in company. Her itinerary, her  _ payment _ \-- Nova has noticed the mystery surrounding their wayward preacher, and empathetically does not like it.

 

Morrell is a model passenger: he keeps to himself, he doesn’t seem to be harassing the staff, and more importantly, he stays where he’s supposed to. Nova appreciates a man who can follow directions like that.

 

He’s thinking fondly of Mr. Morrell and of Rick’s early years, full of unsurety and a certain willingness to follow orders to feel useful, when he catches the wayward pilot checking the surveillance feeds from all over the ship.

 

“Half the time I pause and wonder if you watch me shower ‘for security reasons’. How do you even manage to tap into these cameras?”   
  


Rick grunts and scrubs a hand over his face. “Amy helps,” he replies, switching focus to the empty space in front of him. “It’s not important.”

Nova almost wonders why Rick thinks that his habit of spying on his crewmates could be  _ unimportant _ , and  then the part of him that keeps up with Kai on a daily basis quashes that thought before it could truly form. 

 

“In any case, do stop, at least until our Osiris docking. Ms. Blair seems like the type to pitch you out of an airlock for this kind of... security.”

 

Rick grunts.

 

“So will you be shutting off the surveillance on our guests?”

 

The engines hum in the background. Nova marvels at the emptiness of the space around them. Asteroid belts, he remembers, always seemed to look so packed together. And then he got dragged out into the skies and marvelled at how a ship could travel for months and not find a piece of land, much less a  _ landmark _ .

 

Nova snorts. “I suppose I’ll have to leave you to it. I want the cameras  _ off _ , at least in private spaces, by your next shift change, you hear me? I won’t cover for you if you get caught.”

 

\--- ---

 

Rick turns back to the monitors once Nova leaves the cockpit. It might be Kai’s name on paper as the captain, but Nova is the only one, after Rick himself and his sister, that he’d even let into the cockpit. Kai got as far as he did without Nova or the Masters because of spit and a well-placed prayer; after that, well, Rick doesn’t really want to know.

 

But as competent as he is, Nova’s got it all wrong. About the monitoring, at least-- Rick doesn’t care much for what’s in his brain otherwise-- because every single one of these passengers have a few screws loose.

 

Ms. Blair eats three-quarters rations, and opted for vitamin supplements offered as part of her fare, but takes her own. In the mornings, afternoons, and evenings, she stands and eyes the cargo bay doors like they’ll come alive and eat her.

Morrell, in turn, watches both Kai and Ms. Blair. Why Kai, he has no idea, because literally everyone knows Nova is the real captain of this fearless flyer, but for as suspicious as she is, Rick wants to warn her to stay in the open and stick to that schedule. He thought about it, the one time the two of them were in the kitchen, but she squared her shoulders and walked out as soon as Morrell walked in for coffee and breakfast. He’s pretty sure she’s aware of the threat.

 

The weirdest of them all, hands down, is Shepherd Liza No-Last-Name. Her itinerary is full of holes; she has an unregistered firearm that she cleans every night; and she only eats half-rations, full-stop. At least Ms. Blair is only weird-- Shepherd Liza is downright a danger to herself. Half-rations might last her a month at best, but this is space-- who would do something so risky with their body in literally the middle of nowhere?

 

This is why he’s got cameras installed everywhere, he thinks, vindicated. If something happens, at least they can react accordingly.

 

The sensors flail, signalling a distress signal within 10-K clicks. It’s a little out of the way, but it could mean salvage. He flips the switch to let the intercom crackle to life.

 

“There’s a distress signal, but it’s a little out of our way. I’m slowing down to allow for a decision. Stand-by.”

 

The decision-- and the wreckage-- comes quickly. “Fuck it!” Kai shouts. “Get the boarding equipment set up.  _ Void’s Knight  _ to that payload, prepare to dock.”

 

“Do I get to join the party this time?” He doesn’t want to, so if he asks, then Kai’s answer will be--

 

“I feel bad  _ leaving  _ you up there all the time. Amy, keep his seat warm. Join the fun, Rick!”

 

\-- _ No. _

 

 

 

 

\--- ---

This kind of shit is what Kai  _ lives  _ for. The hustle and bustle of a full ship, the promise of adventure and mystery, albeit a small one; it sweetens the filtered air around them. And Rick wanted to come along, what a treat! He doesn’t leave the cockpit for anything less than a fire, a fight, or the five-dish rule; it’ll be fun to see what he picks up from salvage.

 

He, Juliet, and Rick change into the anti-rad space suits and attach their tethers to the ports near the cargo bay doors. When pre-boarding checks are done,  Kai lets Nova know to hermetically seal off the doors to the cargo bay. Juliet releases the support struts on the connector tunnel, and the garish yellow tunnel springs open, jutting comically off of the ship. They might be old hands at this, but Juliet barely finishes guiding the far mouth with her PSY to fit around a small maintenance hatch before the 30-second warning siren goes off. 

That’s the worst part of this whole thing, Kai muses. He doesn’t really get a chance to look at the stars-- well, navigation, obviously, but to  _ enjoy _ them? Not... not as often as he had once hoped.

“I’ll put 20 credits down on this being a bust,” Juliet sighs. The lens on her helmet fogs up. “We ready to get this show on the road?” Kai grins and flashes her a thumbs-up. Rick grunts, because he always seems to hide his enthusiasm for adventure behind a façade on uncaring aloofness, but he’s still moving, so that’s a good sign.

 

The wreckage is exposed to cold space here-- small pinpricks of starlight illuminate this room through the small holes in the ceiling. From the outer pockets of his jumpsuit to pull out a laser cutter the length of his palm.

It takes a few tries, and a few solid thwacks against the wall to realign the batteries inside, but in the end Juliet holds the door steady while Kai melts through the insulation. He grins when Juliet tilts the door just slightly and watches it smash into the floor of the old maintenance section.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Kai swears he sees a lock pad light up a eye-searing blue, but when he turns, nothing’s there.

The texture on the walls here were kind of retro, though. 

\--- --- 

 

\--- ---

Amy comes off a shift from the cockpit for a cup of tea and immediately regrets her choices. Because in her chair-- the chair she has  _ personally _ built and sanded down and hit someone over the head with and painted-- sits Ant, prim and proper and  _ drinking her tea. _

“Morning!” He chirps. Amy stomps down on the instinctive reaction to strangle him. He absolutely has a job to do, and it’s probably somewhere he hates with a passion, but this does not mean he can  _ drink her tea _ or  _ sit in her chair _ .

“Out,” she commands. He sticks out his tongue, but vacates quickly enough, leaving his half-drunk cup behind. She looks him dead in the eye and, in response to his singular raised eyebrow, drains the rest of the cup without breaking eye contact. “What do you need from me?”

Ant leans into the table and passes her a datapad with a confirmation receipt. “I need to be on Jaymohs inside of the next 4 months.”

Amy stares at the itinerary. “That’s literally, at  _ best _ , two months away. That’s if we turn around, like,  _ right now _ .”

“I know.” He taps the screen. “That’s why I’m telling you, not asking.”

“That’s-- did they miss a decimal point?” She’s so onboard with this now, there are  _ so _ many zeroes in that receipt. “Is that-- do we--”

“Standard contract.”

Amy copies the receipt and shoots it to Kai, Nova, Rick, and herself. “It looks like something catastrophic happened to our itinerary, I guess. We were due for it at some point.”

 

\--- ---

 

Kai’s datapad vibrates in his inside pocket. This means either a) something is on fire, b) someone has sent him a selfie with something on fire in the background, or secret option c) has occurred and something  important actually needs his attention. 

When he sees Rick look down at where his pants pockets are, grunt, and look back at the expiration dates on the canisters of coffee in his hands, he knows that it’s probably finally something interesting. His executive decision is to put down the case of kitchen knives (he’s certain that this is a middling brand, and will not fetch much anywhere outside of the Outer Rim systems. Which means that anyone worth their salt (heh, salt in the kitchen) would know that anyone that would ransack the place wouldn’t look inside the case, so there should be--)

“A- _ ha! _ ” he shouts, bringing up a warranty guide to the knife set. “Oh, come  _ on _ , this was the perfect place to hide a credit chit!”   
  


Juliet pokes her head in to see Rick looking unimpressed at Kai, who realizes he’s still brandishing the warranty information for this case. Kai smiles widely, putting everything to rights and stowing the case back under the sink-- where a credit chit is taped to the underside of the countertop.

“ _ A-ha!  _ You cannot hide from me!” he cries, brandishing the card. “Once again, Treasure Prince Kai has struck pay-dirt!”

“I’d say,” Juliet mutters, wrinkling her nose. “Looks like that’s been here since pre-launch, whenever  _ that _ was.” She leans into the food prep counter, and nods to the sink. “How long you think it’s been here?”

“50-odd years?” Kai hazards when Rick sagely murmurs, “too long.”

“What? It’s not like its  _ fusion turbines _ ,” Kai grumbles when the two of them stare. “I mean, only a little? At least, identifying them, but that’s kid stuff.” Juliet rolls her eyes before she turns to leave. She has no appreciation for mechanics. He can probably count on Rick for this kind of guy talk-- oh, nope, he’s back out the door, hot on Juliet’s heels.

The inch-thick dust kicks up around them like an ion storm, leaving ethereal clouds in their wake. It’s a little unsettling. (Hah! Unsettling, unsettled dust! Nice one.) He pastes on a grin and tromps after them, poking in for a second into the open doors of the server banks before continuing on.

They make a beeline to a monitor bank in the medbay; Rick makes heads or tails of what the drug labels and expiration dates are, and Kai absently announces (with startling accuracy) what drug is for what common ailment and how much it sells for in major trading sectors while he jumps at nothing and suspiciously watches the doors. Juliet is splicing in the allotted medical budget into the  _ Void’s Knight _ slush fund. Kai’s definitely aware that she’s skimming about 5 to 10% off the top, but he puts up with it (mostly because her PSY talents are invaluable and only partly that he’s in the middle of a dilapidated part of a colonization fleet, so she could definitely launch him into space if she thinks it’s a good idea.)

 

A light flickers on overhead.

 

“Uh-huh...” Kai drawls. “I know  _ I  _ didn’t do that.”   
  
Juliet doesn’t even look up from her datapad, “Does it matter? It’s probably motion-sensors or something.”

[...]

\--- ---

[shit]

\--- ---

Rick watches Morrell, gun in hand, back into the berth. Hazel is trembling next to him-- he wasn’t expecting a chemist to be anything but scared stiff at the sight of weapons, but he supposes a woman that would trust a shady crew like the  _ Void’s Knight  _ has already done some questionable things.

 

What Rick doesn’t trust is the rage on her face, the palpable, desperate fury that taints the air. It gets harder and harder to breathe the closer Morrell gets to the cryopod.  Morell checks the keypad keeping everything in stasis, and when he demands that Hazel input the keycode, she goes, shaking but willingly.

 

Rick realizes, startled, that this is the realest he’s ever seen her, as her hands punch in the code to unlock the cryopod. That even at her quietest moments, alone in the quiet hours of the ship, there’s always been a wary distance between herself and the rest of the crew. The cryopod lid creaks upwards. Morrell cries out in triumph, and Rick takes his moment of distraction to plow forward.

 

He’s too late, because when Morrell dives into the pod to retrieve whatever his prize is, Hazel slams the lid of the case on his back. 

 

Rick nearly trips over himself as he watches Hazel repeatedly smash the door against his shoulders, the magnetic locking mechanism nearly activating on each downward swing. Hazel screams, wordless fury, and then the panel with the lock interface drips into a sharpened point and bites into Morrell’s back.

 

_ “You don’t touch my family,” _ she hisses, and the panel warps back into its original shape. Rick shakes, to clear the helpless fuzz from his limbs, and together they drag Morrell onto the floor. But when Hazel turns back to the cryopod, a human hand is already limply moving towards the lip of the machine.

 

“Son of a  _ bitch _ \--” 

 

_ “Eve!” _

 

“Who the fuck is that?” The hand belongs to a girl, shivering and in a hospital gown, that Hazel helps into a sitting position. The girl is disoriented-- who knows how long she’s been in there?-- and her eyes slowly focus onto Hazel. “Is that-- are you  _ trafficking people? _ ”

 

The girl flinches. Hazel’s hands fly up to her shoulders, her hair. “No, no, shh; he didn’t mean it like that, did he?”

“Hay-  _ Hazel _ ,” the girl croaks. “ _ I just want to go home.” _ Rick has a startling realization that Hazel had shouted a name, and concurrent to the idea that  _ she can’t go home because Hazel  _ kidnapped  _ her _ is another thought-- she told Morrell not to harm her family.

This could become less simple than he thinks it is, and judging by the dying man on the floor, the girl crying into Hazel’s shoulders, and--

“Step away from the girl,” Liza announces, unregistered piston pointed at the top of the girl’s head, “or I’ll hit both of you, and only one person’s gonna walk away from it.”

\--and the Shepherd with the gun, this wasn’t even simple to begin with.

 

\--- ---

 

Liza nearly can’t believe that she’s doing this. Well, okay, she absolutely can, because it’s happening to her  _ right now _ , but she definitely can’t imagine doing this in any other situation.

 

She has her gun firmly trained on the girl’s head. If Ms. Blair’s kidnapped a child, then that’s probably not even her real name, because only an idiot would associate a crime and a sin like that with their real name, and she seems like a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.

 

Killing the child is nearly an empty threat. Ms. Blair doesn’t need to know that, though.

 

Liza doesn’t cock her gun, doesn’t make any sudden movements. She takes a shallow breath, as slowly as she dares, and repeats herself.

 

Ms. Blair finally processes that Liza means business. Her face pales, her delicate features twist in rage, but she slowly lets go of the girl’s shoulders and, careful not to startle her, backs up by inches. “Hands against the wall,” Liza says. “Pilot Masters? Please bring the girl up here.” If she can get the girl to her room, she’ll definitely be safe. All she needs is some distance between the girl and Ms. Blair; she can decide what to do with Ms. Blair after she’s heard Pilot Masters’ and Ms. Blair’s confessions.

 

It’s a little too late for Mr. Morrell. She’ll have to give him final rites instead.

Pilot Masters makes his way towards the girl with purpose. Liza thinks she almost has this in the bag, but as he reaches out to take her hand, his hand looks like it meets resistance. His palm presses up against an invisible wall a foot away from the girl.

Liza needs to stay calm. Her teachers never taught her how to negotiate hostage situations, but the one thing they taught her is that to save someone’s soul, one must remain calm and let people absolve themselves. “What did you trap her in, Ms. Blair?” If she’s calm, this can be solved without force.

“ _ Trapped?  _ I--” Ms. Blair spins away from the wall, and points towards Liza. “There is no way I would  _ trap _ Evie, don’t you  _ dare _ accuse me of--”

Liza takes another shallow breath and takes a chance.

She pulls the trigger and shoots Evie--  _ what a pretty name, _ Liza thinks distantly,  _ I hope she gets a chance to grow into it _ \-- and the bullet ricochets off of a barrier. Pilot Masters scrambles back, and Ms. Blair jumps forward, wide-eyed and pale, as the bullet buries itself in the floor of the catwalk below Liza’s feet. Evie stumbles and bumps her head against the walls from the force of impact. 

“What did you trap her in, Ms. Blair?” she repeats.

\--- ---


End file.
